Laboratory
Astrophysics: An Oxymoron No More

I
was asked to begin by framing the discussion, and I propose to do
so by starting with a two-word oxymoron, an oxymoron that for millennia
might have seemed blasphemous as well as puzzling. It is this: "laboratory
astrophysics." This is the branch of astronomy that attempts
to replicate astronomical processes in the laboratory.

To
anyone who believes, as most of Galileo's contemporaries did, that
the heavens are governed by completely different physical laws from
mundane, earthly events, the idea of "laboratory astrophysics"
would make no sense. Indeed, given that the mechanics of the heavens
were supposedly perfect and divine, it would even smell of blasphemy.

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